New York Fashion Week Dialled 'Different'
New York Fashion called for something different this season. Designers like Eckhaus Latta and Collina Strada experimented with the notion of a fashion show; Sandy Liang brought back charisma and narrative arc; and Willy Chavarria and Simkhai offered fashion responses to their country of residence, America.
Mike Eckhaus and Zoe Latta of Eckhaus Latta staged their Spring-Summer 2025 show as a dinner, featuring a seven-minute intermission. Being something of enfants terribles allows them to do things their way. The menu included ginger noodles and glazed pork with brown sugar. As a parting gift, each guest received a bag of weed and a lighter.
Having founded their brand in 2011, with the Rhode Island School of Design as their alma mater, they have a background in sculpture and textile design, respectively. There is something Dadaist in their approach, taking raw materials, initially found garments, and later cutting and splicing fabrics and looks together. It’s a kind of 3-D scrapbooking or bricolage.
The designers acquired the technical skills necessary to understand drapery, manufacture, and technique. In doing so, they’ve attracted a following of models, makers, and friends of the house across various genres and intersections. Many of these individuals modelled in their show, highlighting the intimacy that is integral to the brand.
For Summer 2025, Eckhauss and Latta pieced together different fabrics, their signature knits with rolled raw hems, often shrunken on top, styled with equally small pieces or fuller pants. There were jumbo faux fur cuffs and collars on a cropped jacket, and baggy jeans in ‘dirty’ washes. The palette was muted, with washed-out pastels, and blue making a significant note.
The Collina Strada show also shifted away from a traditional runway format, instead taking place on a mown patch in the Lower East Side’s Marble Cemetery. Inspired by the meme “touch grass”, the show focused on unplugging, logging off, and spending less time on electronic devices. Designer Hillary Taymour also mentioned the influence of the horse girls’ state fair.
Playing on the "horsey girl" concept, models wore floor-length hair reminiscent of Nazarites and animal manes. A sense of nature’s abundance came through in floaty tea dresses with asymmetrical frills. Some featured delicate lace trims, while others were layered over trousers. Most were rendered in smudged, tempera-like tie-dye on silk chiffon. Additional fabrics included faded plaids, chunkier boucle plaids, stripes, abstract florals, and animal prints. Shoes ranged from frilled ankle boots to Puma sneakers with detachable flower cut outs, or Sperry topsiders.
Later in the show, frills with raw edges adorned a sash crossing the body. Large leg-of-mutton sleeves evoked ghostly maidens, reminiscent of Miss Havisham from Dickens' Great Expectations. Elizabeth Sweetheart, also known as the ‘Green Lady of Brooklyn’, appeared wearing an ensemble in army and Kelly green, with a chartreuse sweatshirt tied at the waist—a tribute to her lifelong devotion to the colour green, its etymology, usage, and meanings.
Some models sat on a garden seat during the show, a tableau that could have been rendered by the English pastoralist Thomas Gainsborough. The show’s final look, a model pushing a mower in micro shorts and a black tank with lace inserts, perfectly encapsulated the ‘touch grass’ theme. Taymour distilled disparate ideas—tech detoxes, climate concerns—into a joyful, participatory event with a clear message: touch grass.
For her show on September 8, Sandy Liang focused her transformation on the clothing itself, with her muse at the centre of the collection. Liang cited the animated series Totally Spies! as inspiration, blending '60s fashion with a '90s lens.
True to the show’s premise of three undercover teenage spies—Clover, Sam, and Alex—from California, domestic service outfits offered a setup for that transformation from civilian or high school girl to superheroine. The smocks with half-zips, layered over similarly styled undergarments, falling just below the crotch, were also reminiscent of Maid in Manhattan’s pre-transformation Jennifer Lopez. Coordinates followed: a loose tank paired with a mini skirt in pearl grey check, and a cropped jacket with gathering at the bust, accompanied by a matching headscarf. These recalled American designer Lily Pulitzer (and the Slim Aarons' Kodachrome II photographs of her clothing), as well as Geoffrey Beene’s iconic mini dresses.
Tackling the threat from criminals may require a suit, and Liang responded with skirt suits in army green, tan, and lemon pousset, styled with small handbags in cerise, lipstick red, and black. Later, buttoned jackets with puffed sleeves were worn over clam-diggers, bringing a modern yet gentle '60s vibe. Some pieces appeared in heavy taffeta with crystal-encrusted chokers, alluding to the transition from high school to Malibu (or Mali-U) university for the three emissaries. Dresses in duchesse satin, crystal-strap embellishments, and frothy sleeves suggested a debutante’s coming-out season. Additional details included bows trailing from collars or tied at the waist.
Willy Chavarria’s show was titled ‘América’, the spelling adapted from Spanish, with the accented letter é pronounced like the letter e, drawing on his Mexican-American heritage. A mariachi band performed before an American flag, providing an interlude before the clothing was presented.
The collection was built around archetypal rugged individualism—those who “labour in the fields, (bring) food to our tables.” There were workwear separates in big proportions—full trousers with a double pleat-front, oversized shirts, and an outfit resembling a guard’s, with Harrington jackets. Some of the exaggerated proportions extended to pointy shirt collars, and keys hung from fobs clipped onto belt loops.
The show, broken into three parts—a triptych—closed with the unveiling of a collaboration with Adidas. Chavarria’s athleisure featured tops and tracksuits with the slogan ‘Chicano’, an identifier for people of Mexican descent born in the United States. Adding to this politically charged atmosphere, Chavarria issued stickers that stated ‘Willy Says Vote’. With America deciding in early November, he has made clothing with a message—one that is rooted in a sense of self, and one of hope too.
With his self-proclaimed “optimistic take on sportswear”, Jonathan Simkhai created a show that offered new propositions for this well-established category of American fashion. Amber Valletta, the 17-time Vogue cover model, opened the show in a mackintosh overcoat, bandeau, and skirt falling below the knee, all in ecru. The next three looks featured lattice lace floral panels inserted into cropped bowling shirts and a duster coat.
There was also an interesting use of a fabric that is typically delicate, especially when set side by side with technical fabrics or black leather. A base palette of stark white was used for oversized parachute pants and jacket combinations, a shirt waister (an American classic), a zip-through tunic dress, and a collared cropped top and skirt, all while exposing the midriff.
There was more ecru, with special cut-out and lattice details in knits being a highlight. The white was balanced with black for a graphic direction, and there was grey too, with a cautionary foray into colour—citrus: tangerine, and lemon. To avoid the collection looking too stark and to build on the detail in the fully-fashioned knits, floral appliqué added more in terms of dimension and movement.
This was Simkhai’s first showing of menswear, and these pieces proved to be sympathetic to the feminine side of the range; the volume and freeness of the shapes worked across both offerings. Straps wrapping around an exposed waist recalled Helmut Lang and provided a directional element. Overall, there was a sense of ease, a sense of movement, and clothes that felt modern and straightforward.
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